


Sandalwood

by CowboyBootsAndHuntersHelper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker, Cologne, Men of Letters, Perfume, Senses, Smell, incense, potpurri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:15:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CowboyBootsAndHuntersHelper/pseuds/CowboyBootsAndHuntersHelper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean first smells it in the back of his new closet.</p><p>(Dean/Castiel to come in later chapters)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Time

Dean first smells it in the back of his new closet.

He hadn’t noticed the closet at first.  At some point, one of the previous residents had thought it a good idea to paint the door nearly the same color as the wall. Then one morning, Dean is half asleep and stumbling from the bed in the dark, scratching at his belly as he fumbles along the left side of the room. He's pawing at the floor and furniture for the robe he discarded the night before when his hipbone abruptly jams against an outcrop in the wall.  Cursing, Dean finds the light and flips it on, squinting against the sudden brightness.  After his vision adjusts, he strikes up another search, this time for the item that so unceremoniously interrupted his lazy morning routine.  It turns out to be a tiny knob sticking out from the middle of a small depression in the wall - a door.  Dean considers making a quick detour into the kitchen for some for some backup, certain that his obnoxiously chipper morning person of a brother would be up and willing to help should something freaky be lurking within yet  _another_ unexplored hall of the bunker.  Then again, if it turns out to be nothing, Dean would look like an idiot.  He tugs lightly on the handle.

The tiny door gives way to reveal a small alcove, about four feet across and three feet deep.  On it’s own, the ceiling of the nook would just barely clear Sam, but the crooked, cluttered shelf installed across the top notches the height down to where Dean has to tuck his head a bit as he steps inside.  There are a few stripped wire hangers sitting forlornly on the rusty cross bar at the back, and Dean eyes them with something akin to reverence.  Sure, it’s an itty bitty closet, good only for a couple of Dean’s nice suits, his jacket, and a few shoes at best, but it’s still a closet.  A bonafide monster-free coat hanger and storage shelf closet.  He’s already planning out which of his outfits get the honor of hanging out in here when he catches a whiff of the air.  It doesn’t smell quite right.

Oh, it certainly doesn’t smell  _bad_ , but that’s kind of the problem.  Dean figures, tiny little room like this?  Unopened for about fifty some odd years?  Ought to be smelling pretty dank and musty if you ask him.  But the closet smells  _good._ Really fucking  _good._   He closes his eyes and lets himself enjoy it for a moment.  It’s almost spicy, in a soft sort of way - the sort of way that sends warmth curling out from the tight little ball of tension that always sits uncomfortably in his chest, pooling pleasantly in his stomach and wrapping gently around aching joints, wrists, elbows, and knees. It plays along taut back muscles and squished ribs, broken and reset so many times Dean isn’t entirely sure he isn’t missing one.  He rolls his shoulders slowly just as he steps into the little nook just about as far as his large frame will allow. 

The scent starts to get  _heavy_ , and Dean might be starting to feel something.  The fragrance itself isn't that strong; it's a bit lighter than spice, a bit darker than wood, a bit sharper than earth… but trapped between these tiny walls it’s starting to get a bit heady.  Still, Dean doesn’t move, feeling warm and secure as the scent in the air fills him with lazy contentment.  

"Am I, uh, going to have to coax you out of the closet, dude?"  Dean jumps, banging his head on the shelf and turns to glare at his smirking brother.

"You’re the… closet… I mean, whatever. Shut up," Dean coughs through the dust, jostled and fallen from the shelf with a few other odds and ends the previous occupant of the room had had in storage up there.

“‘Cause I will, if that’s what you need me to do, Dean,” Sam declares melodramatically, striding forward and clapping a hand on Dean’s shoulder in a mockery of support as Dean continues hacking up a lung, eyes watering.

"You’re my brother, and I love you, even if you own a great big bag of silicone d-"

“ _Oh my god stop talking,_ " Dean shoulders past Sam, weaving his way around fallen bric-a-brac as Sam laughs at him.  He’ll pick up the few odds and ends later, he decides.

Dean doesn’t make it back to his room for three days.  They got called out to a beast of a hunt, and he’s filthy and sweaty and tired.  By the time he staggers in through the now familiar door of his room, all Dean wants to do is fall face first onto his mattress and sleep for days. His foot knocks against an old set of keys, fallen from the closet shelf, and sends them skittering across the room. Dean flicks on the light and groans as he remembers the mess waiting for him. Though he eyes the small items littered on the floor with distaste, he knows that if he doesn’t pick them up now he’ll just stumble over them when he wakes up, and he'll start the day pissed. Dean reluctantly ambles over to the pile.

He damn near has a heart attack when he sees the hex bag.

This was supposed to be their  _safe place._   And hell, maybe it could never be Home in quite the same way that the Impala has been all these years, but it’s still  _theirs_ , his and Sam’s, and even after two weeks it’s already pretty damn important to him.  And now that tiny scarlet satchel sitting pretty in between chipped knick knacks has torn it away from him.  Dean picks up the pouch with trembling fingers.  He doesn’t want to have to pack them up, to drag Sam away from the first concrete home base they’ve had in years, or to have to pull away from a place where he’s actually starting making room for himself... but if someone knows how to find them here, who can manage to stash a hex bag right under their noses, they can’t just stay-

The bag feels wrong.  Dean frowns at it as he rolls it in his palm.  The pieces inside are far smaller than usual, let alone evenly cut, smoothed, and sized.  The fabric itself is soft, expensive looking, and… covered in dust.  Dean feels foolish as his panic ebbs away.  It’s obvious to him now that it had to have been in the closet for decades; someone must have stashed it up there to keep the tiny alcove fresh when not in use.  Dean remembers teasing Sam when the younger Winchester mentioned getting some Potpourri for the darker, mustier corners of the library a few days back.  Still though, he has to make sure.  He slides the ribbon at the top loose and unfolds the fabric, draping it carefully along his palm so the little brown shavings inside don’t spill over onto the floor.  Some of the shavings are deep brown, some a light tan. There are what appear to be wood chips, and some kind of dark powder… no bones, no herbs, no blood.  He lifts his hand to his nose.

_It’s almost spicy._

'It's a manly scent,' he justifies as he finds himself carefully retying the ribbon and tucking the satchel into the back of his underwear drawer.

The second time, it’s spilled in the library on accident.


	2. The Second Time

The second time, it’s spilled in the library on accident.

A few weeks after Dean discovers his closet, he’s anxiously searching through the shelves of the library.  For once, it isn’t information he’s looking for.  He’s tense.  Their last hunt hadn’t quite gone to plan and now he’s frustrated and his back aches and Sam was being pissy and Dean just wants to read a nice, escapist adventure novel but everything in this damn library is either lore or non-fiction accounts of historical events or unnecessarily elaborate explanations of how the historical events  _were connected to the lore_ and why the hell didn’t this library have one decent crap novel-

"Fuck!"  Dean doubles over, clutching at his knee.   As much as he loves the affectionately dubbed Batcave, the fact of the matter stands that it just wasn't made for people like him.  It isn’t just his bulky, 6’1" frame that’s the problem, either.  As much as he pretends not to notice, or that it doesn’t bother him, Dean is well aware of how bowed his legs are.  Regardless of how used he is to it or how it normally doesn’t affect how he walks, that are just some spaces in the bunker that ran low on space , and so were designed for the shorter, slimmer, more scholarly average of it’s usual occupants.  These spaces were often furnished so tightly that the Men of Letters had to cram the low, jutting tables and chairs in whatever spots they assumed the legs and knees of their initiates (with some clever twisting and careful stepping) would be able to clear.  Spoiler alert: Dean’s do not clear them.  And it seems this corner of the library was one of those spaces.  Dean looks back at what he ran into. This time, the offending object is an old coffee table, looking more like it was the one shoved under the books piled atop of it rather than vice versa.

Dean knows it’s petty.  He knows that the table is an inanimate object and that his next course of action is ultimately useless.  But he kicks the damn thing once for good measure anyway.  The small table rattles and shakes, and few books slide of the top of the pile, knocking into everything around them. Dean grimaces when he hears glass shatter.  Sam will flip if anything got on the books.  He slumps forlornly against the shelf at his back.  Granted, it's not that big of an issue. It was just the cherry on the top of a couple of shit days where evey tiny thing that could go wrong, did. The hunt was crap, Kevin still hadn't gotten anything else off of the half of yhw demon tablet, Sam was steadily lying to him about his health, and Cas... Cas had been in the wind since all that shit went down in the crypt. Dean reaches up and rubs his temple. The whole situation just has him exhausted, and he can almost physically feel himself reaching the end of his rope. That’s when the first tendril of fragrance reaches out to him.  Dean’s eyes widen as he recognizes the scent.  It’s a bit stronger, not quite as muted, and  _oh,_  so much  _fuller_  than the pouch still secreted away in his drawer.  He can already feel it relaxing away his unease, and, psychosomatic or not, he’s grateful.  Dean closes his eyes and slides to the floor.  Leaning his head against the books, he feels peaceful for the first time in days.  The darker, more concentrated scent curling around him now seems better suited to the library than the subdued bag in his room, all dark woods and deep greens and heavy reds and browns, burdened with age and knowledge…

He just sits there for a bit, letting the scent ease away his tension, uncaring if the substance from the broken bottle soaks into the carpet (maybe even hoping a little that it does).  Dean feels warm, almost sated, as the musky fragrance burrows itself deeper into his body.  He can’t explain why it affects him like this.  He had looked into some of the ingredients from the satchel - there was no witchcraft, no magic, just spices and woods.  Dean can’t even tell which item from the bag was in the spilled liquid, but he does know it’s the same active ingredient that put him at ease the first time.  There’s just something about it that makes him…  _happy_.  He’d worried about it at first, but now, sitting quietly across from a mess in a tiny corner of his and Sam’s library, he’s figures that’s okay.  There doesn’t have to be a supernatural reason.  There doesn’t have to be a scientific reason or a practical reason.  Hell, there doesn’t really even have to be a reason at all.  There needn’t be any justifying, no more “it’s a classic” or “it was the only thing on” or “Swayze always get’s a pass!”  

He can just  _like_  something, solely  _because he likes it._

Dean isn’t entirely sure if he’s ever done that before.  He opens his eyes, line of sight finally landing on the small bottle that was smashed on the floor beneath the table.  He picks his way over to it, mindful of the shards, and plucks the now sodden label from the midst of the mess.  Once upon time, some man of letters had apparently left his cologne sitting on the edge of an old end table in his rush to make it to a party on time.  Decades later, Dean finally knows which ingredient from the satchel to keep an eye out for.  He starts to crawl out from under the table when a book, sitting just outside the puddle of perfume, catches his eye.  There’s a detailed embroidery of a wicked looking pirate on the cloth cover.

"Awesome."

The third time, it’s wafting through the library on purpose.


	3. The Third Time

The third time, it’s wafting through the library on purpose.

"Dude, does it smell a little funky in here to you?"  Dean gives a careful, noncommittal shrug as Sam passes the table.

"I dunno, whaddaya mean, ‘funky?’"

"Just… different, you know?"  Dean doesn’t bother looking up from his book.  After finishing the first one in the series a few days ago, he couldn’t stand not knowing whether Lieutenant Holloway would forsake the oppressive Royal Navy in order to follow the rugged, charismatic Captain Lee into piracy or not, especially when Holloway was  _clearly_  unhappy with how his influential family was running things behind the scenes.  So he may or may not have scoured the shelves until he found the sequel.

"Nah, smells the same it always has," he mutters, turning the page.  Sam crinkles his nose at Dean, miffed at the dismissal in his brothers tone.

"Dean, put down the damn book and help me, okay? It smells weird and… and _heavy_  in here.  And a little burny.” Dean lifts an eye brow at that one.

“‘Burn-y?’ Is that even a word, Sam?” Ah, the Bitchface.

"No, I mean, like something’s caught in the vents or is about to catch fire… you know, smokey."  Dean sighs, setting aside his book and leveling a deadpan gaze at his brother.

"Yeah, I think the smell of all the old books in here is starting to get to you, Smokey the Sasquatch.  But hey, you go ahead and check on your vents and precious literature," Dean chides with a smirk. "We wouldn’t want them to get all ‘burny,’ would we?"

"Whatever," Sam mumbles, turning away to stalk back to the other end of the library.  Dean hollers after him. "And hey! Remember, only YOU can prevent library fires!"

"Jerk!"

"Bitch!"  Dean smiles to himself as silence falls over the library, having had the last word, and settles comfortably back into his chair, spreading the book open lazily across his lap.  His broad shoulders completely obscure the stick of incense burning behind him.

The fourth time, it’s hidden in the liner of his jacket, and Sam is starting to suspect something.


	4. The Fourth Time

The fourth time, it’s hidden in the liner of his jacket, and Sam is starting to suspect something.

"Son of a bitch," Dean murmurs, dropping the needle for what seems like the thousandth time, tiny pinprick of blood already welling up to the surface of his finger.

Sam finds him on his hands and knees moments later, rummaging around beneath his small table.

"Lose something?" Sam drawls from where he leans on the doorframe. Dean doesn't have to look up to picture the dorky, lopsided smile that accompanies that tone of voice.

"Yeah, actually," he mumbles in response, groaning as he worms his way out from under the table and stands. Dean grimaces as he stretches, back audibly cracking as he twists. He makes a disgusted noise.

"Jesus," he mutters. "No thirty year old man's back should sound like that..."

"Oh, so we're only thirty now?" Sam laughs as Dean grabs his jacket from the back of one of his chairs.

"Shut up," Dean gently kicks a small basket out of the way against the wall and shoulders his way past his brother, gruff tone at odds with the laughing grin on his face.

"No seriously, it's cool," Sam teases him, following Dean out into the hall.

"I've always wanted to try being the older brother." Sam catches up to his brother and throws an arm around Dean's neck and shoulders, using the height difference to his advantage as he tugs Dean under his arm and up against his chest into prime noogie position.

"Just stick with me, _baby bro_ ," Sam teases as Dean struggles against him, swatting and punching and even a desperate attempt at tickling, all to no avail. He hovers his free hand above Dean's head.

"Don't you do it!" Dean yells, still fruitlessly fighting his much larger brother. "Don't you fucking-"

"What was it you called this?" Sam hugs, fingers wiggling, taunting, inches from Dean's hair. "Oh yeah. _Big brother's prerogative."_

"SAM!"

* * *

 

Fifteen minutes later finds the main room of the bunker in shambles, both brothers standing in the center looking around sheepishly at the mess their escalating rough-housing resulted in.

"Wow..." Sam mumbles under his breath.  "That... that got pretty out of hand." 

"Yeah, it's been a while since we just dicked around like that," Dean laughs, already stepping forward and starting to move anything salvagable back to it's proper location.  Sam moves to help him, but the ringing of the bunker's new 'hunters only' landline cuts him off.

"I'll take it," he sighs, seeing Dean's reluctance to leave the room as is.  "See what you can get clean while I'm on the line."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever.  Down for the mess, but dodging the clean up, I see how it is."  Dean's tone is humorous, but Sam can hear the underlying tension in his brother's voice.  He gets it.  It had been a quiet week.  A fun week.  And with each hunt out on the road, it gets harder and harder to leave their new home.  The phone keeps ringing.

"It might not be anything," Sam offers.  "Could be someone just looking for some lore."

"Go answer it then," Dean grabs the broom from the corner and turns his attention to a shattered vase near the far wall.  His face is blank, and his movements tight.  "See what they need."

* * *

 

It was a bitch of a hunt.  Sam and Dean all but stumble back into their crappy motel room at the ass crack of dawn, filthy, bloody, and exhausted.  The torrential downpour outside echoes around the room, thin walls and shitty insulation doing nothing to keep either the noise or chill at bay.  Dean drops his bag and he swears to God it _sloshes_.

"This sucks."  Sam doesn't have any fight left in him to argue with his brother, merely dropping his own sodden pack and groaning as he ambles towards the shower.

"You didn't call 'dibs,'" Dean snarks half-heartedly, but Sam gives Dean the finger as he shuts the bathroom door.  Dean drops onto the bed with a huff.  The springs creak and moan at him where he sits, digging into his already sore ass and thighs.  Hell, literally _all_ of his muscles are screaming at him, making their ache known either by slow, constant burn or by sharp pinpricks of pain everytime he moves. 

He thinks back to his lazy morning two - or was it three now - days ago, remembering his stiff back and how winded he was after his tumble with Sam, and wonders not for the first time if maybe he was getting a little old for this.  He liked sleeping in his soft bed, waking up in his warm room, taking time on slow mornings to do little things for himself... Dean sighs, pulling his jacket tighter around himself.  He presses his face into the collar and takes a deep breath.  The familiar scent brings warmth with it, and Dean smiles into the fabric.  He was a little worried that Sam would catch him, but it seems he dropped that last needle just in time.  He rubs the collar a little, using his fingers to jostle the potpourri freshly sewn into the lining.  It kicks the scent up a notch, stirring it around so it fills the space between the fabrics and Dean just sits there for a while clutching it to his face, breathing it in and thinking of home.

He likes saving people.  He really does.  But moments like this make him wonder what it would be like to give it all up.  He can almost see himself staying at the bunker.  Like, _staying_.  He'd cook for himself and Sam everyday, breakfast, lunch, dinner, the whole three-meals-a-day shebang.  He could go into town, actually meet the people that lived around them, make friends... neighbors, even.  Kind of.  Maybe he'd even get a nine to five, work at a garage or something.  Sam could be happy too, at that university just across town.  He liked the whole school thing the first go round, and it wouldn't be to difficult to draft up some fake papers for him.  If everything went well, Dean might even let the kid get that damn dog he's always wanted so much.  Then... then maybe if they could just track down Cas, they could-

"-ean, are you _sniffing_ your coat?"

Dean yanks himself out of his daydream, jolting upright and almost throwing his jacket down into his lap.  He had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't even noticed Sam finishing his shower.

"I, uh... what?"  Sam is looking at him quizzically, towel clutched around his waist and dripping water steadily onto the floor.

"Your jacket.  You were just," Sam's brow furrows as he trails off and gestures around his face with the hand not currently protecting his modesty.

"I wasn't... it was... I'm tired, Sam.  It was a rough hunt," Dean deflects, standing and making his way into the still steamy bathroom.

"Uh huh..." Sam is still standing in the middle of the motel room, watching him curiously as he starts to close the door.  Before it can shut completely, Dean sees Sam reach over and pick up the jacket.

'Shit,' he thinks to himself, leaning against the sink as he disrobes.  He knows Sam's going to think it weird, a grown ass man hiding something like that in his jacket just because it smells good, smells like home... well, he might not figure it out anyways.  Might not want to press it close enough to his face to smell it, all covered in mud and blood as it is, might not realized that Dean was the one to so meticulously cut and thread and sew the layer of fabric back to together.

Dean steps into the shower and turns the dial to the highest setting, blasting heat across his aching back as he talks himself down.  The rest of the motel may be crappy, but the shower does it's job and soon Dean feels relaxed and sleepy and sated enough that he knows he'll be able to fall asleep even on that shitty mattress.  He might even ditch one of the pillows in favor of wrapping a pillow case around his filthy jacket, to bury his nose in it as he sleeps.

The fifth time, it's smoothed into the leather of the Impala, and Cas figures him out.


End file.
